Wexner Center for the Arts: About Us: M. Christopher Jones, Director Of Design

M. Christopher Jones

Director of Design

Chris Jones has been working as a graphic designer for 20 years, 15 of which have been with the Wexner Center for the Arts. As design director, he leads the center’s in-house design team of full-time designers and student interns, which works in collaboration with the center’s various program areas and marketing/communications department in producing the full array of designed materials for the center. These materials include institutional and program identity and branding; print and electronic collateral; exhibition and environmental graphics; advertising design; web site visual direction; major publications; and catalogues. Jones personally designed the catalogues Terry Allen: a simple story (Juarez), Maya Lin: Public/Private, Chris Marker: Silent Movie, Landscape Confection, Sadie Benning: Suspended Animation, Chris Marker: Staring Back, Jeff Smith: Bone and Beyond, and Mark Bradford, as well as an artist’s project, Josiah McElheny’s Notes for a Sculpture and a Film. Jones and his team have been recognized with awards from the American Association of Museums, Ohio Museums Association, and Columbus Society of Communicating Arts.

   Jones first joined the center’s design team in summer of 1990 while still a student at Ohio State and while continuing to serve as a volunteer docent (which he had been since the center’s opening in autumn of 1989). In 1992 he became a full-time staff designer, working in that capacity for about seven years. He left the Wexner Center in ’99 for a four-year stint with the Columbus studio of The VIA Group where he worked on design, identity, branding, packaging, and advertising projects for such clients as American Eagle Outfitters, ProMusica Columbus, National Endowment for the Arts, and The Mayors’ Institute on City Design. He returned to the Wexner Center in 2003 as director of design, spearheading a communications audit, as well as a brand and identity development and relaunch for center’s post-renovation opening in autumn 2005.

 Jones attended Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, followed by The Ohio State University, studying fine arts, art history, and graphic design. He is a member of the Columbus Society of Communicating Arts (CSCA) and the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), and served as an original member of the board of the Friends of Logan Elm Press at The Ohio State University.